– Ukrainian Navy Flagship Hoists Russian Flag (RIA Novosti, March 23, 2014):
SEVASTOPOL, March 23 (RIA Novosti) – The Ukrainian Navy flaghsip Slavutich has raised the Russian flag in Sevastopol, local media said Sunday.
The ship raised the Russian flag after negotiations on Saturday evening, the Kryminform news agency said.
“There was no storm. The Slavutich hoisted the Russian flag and the crew went ashore,” the agency quoted a representative of the Crimean self-defense forces as saying.
According to the Kryminform news agency, no ships under Ukrainian flags have left in Crimea.
Ukraine’s only submarine, the Zaporizhzhia, also raised the Russian flag on Saturday.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that about 190 military units in Crimea have hoisted Russian flags instead of Ukrainian and applied to join the Russian armed forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Friday to ratify the treaty providing for the reunification of the Crimean Peninsula with Russia.
Leaders in the predominantly Russian-ethnic republic refused to recognize the legitimacy of the government in Kiev that came to power amid often violent protests last month, instead seeking reunification with Russia.
That ought to say something to anyone who can reason two step logic. Step one leading to an answer……very straightforward.
Putin won.
US, please go home. We have so many problems of our own, a falling dollar that is killing buying power, inflation that is obvious to anyone who buys food, gas, pays rent or mortgages, insurance, medical care, auto maintenance, prices of things we need………….
We are fed lies our inflation is low, but it is the opposite. I read today that VZ has a 54% inflation rate, the highest in the Americas………..I wonder what our real inflation calculates into, certainly more than 6%……..probably closer to VZ than anyone in government wants us to know.
I remember the big inflation days of the 1970s and early 1980s……and we are in something far worse because we cannot get the truth from anywhere.
A government that is totally corrupt, that no longer serves the best interests of the nation is one that will do nothing to help the people.
Homelessness, grinding poverty, hopelessness…..these are things we never saw, now it is everywhere.
Our corrupt leaders need money badly. We have relied on foreign investment for decades, and that is about gone. The middle class has been destroyed, so there is a vulnerable group I call the greedy gut wannabes……….they see themselves as affluent right now. They are doing fine, they have mortgages that are much higher than current value of their homes and investment homes……….but, they are still awaiting the housing recovery that won’t happen. The next big slap in the face will be rising interest rates, and that is going to end a great deal of the wannabe greedy guts……..they are going to find out the game has changed completely. The interest rates on a mortgage currently at 2% require a far lower payment than one demanding 5% (the going rate for those with excellent credit) and higher. Most of these mortgages on these shaky properties are ARMs as Greenspan recommended.
Since the end of WW2, every recession has been led out by housing starts. This is no recession. Our economy has been gutted, and the money is gone. There will be no housing recovery because there are no high paying jobs to support buyers as we always had in the past. All opportunity (except in crime) is gone. Our career based economy has been destroyed, and a few greedy guts have all the money, and they are putting it elsewhere, not here, and not in China.
The entire world has changed. The next people to get stripped of all their wealth are the wannabe greedy guts…..and I have no sympathy for them. The handwriting is on the wall, all you have to do is read……
“the moving finger having writ moves on,
nor all your piety or wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash away a word of it.”
That is the result of denial.